Vagrant Migration
The occasional great invasions beyond the limits of their normal range of certain birds associated with the far North are quite different from migration patterns discussed previously. Classic examples of such invasions in the eastern part of the country are the periodic flights of crossbills. Sometimes these migrations will extend well south into the southern States.
Figure 29. Northern recoveries of young bald eagles banded as nestlings in Florida. The birds sometimes "migrate" over 1,500 miles up the coast during their first summer before returning south (From Broley 1947).
Snowy owls are noted for occasional invasions that have been correlated with periodic declines in lemmings, a primary food resource of northern predators. According to Gross (1947), 24 major invasions occurred between 1833 and 1945. The interval between these varied from 2 to 14 years, but nearly half (11) were at intervals of 4 years. A great flight occurred in the winter of 1926-27 when more than 1,000 records were received from New England alone, but the largest on record was in 1945-46 when the "Snowy Owl Committee" of the American Ornithologists' Union received reports of 13,502 birds, of which 4,443 were reported killed. It extended over the entire width of the continent from Washington and British Columbia to the Atlantic coast and south to Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. One was taken as far south as South Carolina.
In the Rocky Mountain region, great flights of the beautiful Bohemian waxwing are occasionally recorded. The greatest invasion in the history of Colorado ornithology occurred in February 1917, when it was estimated that at least 10,000 were within the corporate limits of the city of Denver. The last previous occurrence of the species in large numbers in that section was in 1908.
Evening grosbeaks likewise are given to more or less wandering journeys, and, curiously enough, in addition to occasional trips south of their regular range, they travel east and west for considerable distances. For example, grosbeaks banded at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, have been recaptured on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and in the following season were back at the banding station. Banding records and museum specimen identifications demonstrate that this east-and-west trip across the northeastern part of the country is sometimes made also by purple finches, red crossbills, and mourning doves.